Designing an Employee Experience Survey that Works in 2023
New Year, New Approaches
This year, are you still going to be sending out the same, tired, often-ignored employee experience surveys? Are you going to read the same one-word answers, and get the same, obvious conclusions? Or are you going to use 2023 to change your approach and gain a real understanding of how your employees are experiencing your organization?
Along with face-to-face interviews and data-driven employee experience measures, surveys are one of the key ways in which you can properly understand the intersection of your organization’s culture and your employees’ perception of their journeys through all the touchpoints within your organization. So, you need to get them right. Why not start today?
What is an Employee Experience Survey and How Does it Work?
An employee experience survey is a method used to gather feedback from employees by asking them to answer set questions. The goal of these surveys is not only to give insights into the way employees are feeling about working at their company but to provide inspiration for actionable changes to improve the company culture.
How to Create an Effective Employee Experience Survey
Employee experience surveys are an important tool for gauging employee satisfaction and understanding the needs of your team - but they are often overlooked, and companies use the same surveys over and over again at numerous organizations.
By crafting effective questions, you can identify areas of improvement, get feedback on existing initiatives, and gain insights into what motivates employees. With the right questionnaire design and best practices in place, you can create an effective employee experience survey that will help you improve employee engagement and satisfaction.
One thing that Uncharted Way recommends is meeting with employees individually or with small focus groups to uncover what the pressure and pain points might be. By doing this, you are forming a hypothesis that can be answered with survey questions.
The key to creating good survey questions rests on a number of factors and they should be tailored to your organization. But there are a few things that every good survey question has in common:
Specificity
One of the ways in which we can often stumble when designing questions is a lack of specificity. This is one of the biggest flaws in employee experience surveys. It’s not just how you are feeling. It’s how fulfilled you are. Or how efficient you feel like you are being. The more specific you can be, the less chance there is that feeling will be muddied and the more actionable the survey will be.
Open Ended Questions
Allowing space for employees to say what they want, and what they are feeling, is crucial. There may be answers here to questions that you didn’t even think to ask. By giving this space, you are bound to receive interesting, thought-provoking, and more accurate responses.
Open-ended questions allow space for employees to say what they want and how they are feeling. By allowing an open-ended component in surveys, you can understand what is important to the employees working at your organization. Interestingly, by eliminating bias in the question and opening up space for employees to speak their minds, you will probably receive even more interesting, thought-provoking, and specific responses. You can even get answers to questions you didn’t even think to ask about - or uncover signs of bad company culture.
Quantifiable Scales
Having a scale, or some sort of quantifiable number, can make your surveys comparable and properly measurable. People whose focus is around company culture or human resources can often shy away from data – but this is a huge mistake. Data affects every other part of a company, from sales and marketing to leadership and hiring. So why not employee experience as well?
An Example
There’s no perfect question - if there was, I promise I would give it to you. But there are questions that can encompass all of these. Take the following example:
On a scale of one to ten, with one representing unfulfilled and 10 representing very fulfilled, how fulfilled are you in your current position? What experiences have you had that have helped inform the number you selected?
Why is this a good example? First of all, it is specific – it asks about how fulfilled an employee is in their current position. The question also has a quantifiable measure associated with it. By rating the fulfillment on a scale of 1 to 10, you can track improvement over time, compare different departments, and dig into the data. Finally, it has an open-ended question component, which allows employees to verbalize their feelings and let you know of any pressure points that aren’t represented in the data.
Different Types of Surveys
Pulse Surveys
Pulse surveys are designed to be taken at regular intervals (you know, like a pulse). Usually, they are a brief set of questions that an employee can quickly answer and get back to you - they should be snappy and easy to fill out, but also allow for open-ended answers. The advantage of these types of surveys is that you can track progress and get a quick look at how your workforce is feeling – allowing you to sense any sudden changes before they become a problem.
Exit Surveys
Exit surveys are an invaluable tool for employers as they provide insight into employee morale, engagement, and overall satisfaction. This feedback can be used to improve upon existing policies, procedures, and workflows. By gathering valuable information from employees who are leaving an organization, employers can make informed decisions about how best to retain current employees and attract new ones.
People tend to be honest in exit interviews and unload how they are really feeling, and the same is true for exit surveys. Exit surveys have the added benefit of being able to be quantifiable, as opposed to interviews which can often feel more conversational.
Onboarding Surveys
Onboarding Surveys are a different beast entirely and are often skipped – to the organization’s detriment. Onboarding is a huge part of employee experience. According to a study by Bamboohr in 2018, organizations with effective onboarding have 33% more employees feeling engaged compared to those with ineffective onboarding. One of the best times to measure how well you are introducing new employees to the company culture is with an onboarding survey, so don’t forget about this crucial data point!
Other Types
In reality, there are hundreds of different surveys that you could do. Think about the most important times of year for your company – post-conference, after a busy period, in the middle of a merger or layoffs – and don’t just trust your gut with how your team is feeling. Get it in writing and quantify it.
Conclusion
Just like the New Year, survey deadlines can sneak up on you. When they do, it can be so easy to just send out the same old survey you always send or scramble to create something that is brand new at the expense of being functional.
Take a different approach and start to prioritize survey creation before it is time to send them out and get feedback. Tear down your old surveys today, and start from scratch by creating actionable, quantifiable, and specific questions that allow you to know how your employees really think.
Rethinking your entire survey strategy isn’t easy - which is where Uncharted Way can help. With our experience in data-driven employee engagement and strategic employee experience analysis, we can ensure that you are starting on the right footing this year. Interested? Get in touch with our contact form.
Uncharted Way can help with measuring and improving the employee experience at your organization. We have a three-step process that puts an emphasis on data and actionable strategies to help you create the company culture that works for you and your bottom line. Schedule a 15-minute introductory call today.
Meridith Marshall is the CEO and Founder of Uncharted Way and has seen firsthand how people and organizations can navigate the most difficult of circumstances with clarity and openness to improve employee experience and culture in their workplace. She is an industry-recognized expert in using a data-driven approach, and is an Interaction Associates trained facilitator and certified Co-Active coach.